Clocking in with 45 brands, the new #1 movie at the box office, the seasonal romcom New Year's Eve, is bloated with as much product placement and brand name-dropping as it is marquee names. That count is high, yet still 15 brands fewer than the film's precursor, Valentine's Day.

A lot of the product placed in New Year's Eve is subject to a particular paradox: To have disclosed it would have been dishonest to reality.

Taking place around New York City's iconic Times Square New Year's Eve ball drop, the film includes numerous shots of the landmark square and its cluttered signage, as well as plenty o' stock footage of the actual event. In fact, the movie functions as a sort of tourism video produced by the city's tourism board. (Testifying to just how sanctioned it is as a tourism film, Mayor Mike Bloomberg even makes a cameo.)Continue reading...

Amazon considers remedy for Kindle faults.

Anheuser-Busch InBev plans reality show for Budweiser brand.

Apple and HTC face judgment day on patent dispute, as Apple celebrates 100M apps from the Mac App Store and The Beatles' success on iTunes.

AT&T reportedly gets a break in its T-Mobile acquisition plan.

Auto Nation seeks new dealerships in existing Sun Belt markets, while U.S. auto dealers get creative with promotions.

Diamond Foods faces challenge over payments to walnut growers, complicating acquisition of Pringles from P&G.

Disney Four Seasons hotel begins construction.

General Mills takes G-WIN digital innovation initiative global.

GM faces potentially long investigation of Volt fires.Continue reading...

Titan calls itself the leading and the largest transit advertising company in North America, “with more markets and more top ten DMA penetration and riders” than any in the out of home (OOH) advertising category.

In a bid to keep innovating with new advertising solutions for brand marketers, they’re testing three digitally-enabled phone kiosks in New York’s Times Square as you can watch below:Continue reading...

The brand is calling it a "revolution in retailing." On Nov. 10th,  Weatherproof will debut its Apartment 32 flagship store in New York's SoHo district.

Far from a swank retail establishment where customers can peruse the wares, shoppers will be invited to kick back, have an espresso, and socialize. Promising no sales pushes, there is a “leave your BlackBerry at the door” policy. There's even a "Date Night," though it's not an entirely new concept.Continue reading...

AOL’s about.me billboard contest has just concluded with ten online personas moving from computer screen to bright lights today in New York's Times Square. Contestants spent August and September soliciting votes for their about.me page which aggregates all their web identities (e.g., Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn) in one digital place.

“The contest signals a new direction in the area of online self-promotion and yielded results that increased exposure for contestants and the about.me product alike,” said the company about its awareness-building campaign.Continue reading...

Continuing the trend of brands taking over Times Square, FIAT North America brought its first TV commercial, "Drive-in," to life with an event that evoked Italia for Big Apple tourists and shoppers this past weekend, not letting Sunday's rain spoil the fun.

The lure of free espresso and gelato, bocce ball, music and a drive-in movie experience — thirty Fiat 500 sedans and cabrios arranged,  drive-in style, to watch movies on the Times Square jumbotron as dusk fell — wooed passersby to check out the "Simply More by Fiat" experience, where they could chat with Fiat product specialists (including Fiat North America head Laura Soave) and check out the 2012 Fiat 500 and Fiat 500 Cabrio.Continue reading...

Period films and costume dramas never offer much in the way of product placement, except for the odd historical brand sighting.

Genre-bending period films appear to be no different, as the Western/science fiction mash-up Cowboys & Aliens could not even match earlier #1 film True Grit by mustering a Sharps rifles mention.Continue reading...

When nature-loving Henry David Thoreau wrote “I heartily accept the motto, 'That government is best which governs least,' in his essay “Civil Disobedience,” he probably never imagined an app that replaced advertising with works of art from independent artists.

The Public Ad Campaign, an underground American organization that uses “bold acts of civil disobedience” to “air (its) grievances in the court of public opinion,” debuted an app last weekend that allows mobile devices to virtually replace outdoor advertising with public art, using augmented reality to take over a billboard, bus shelter or other form of advertising.

The billboard-hating group tested its monkeywrenching app at the raucous crossroads of the marketing world, Times Square, where every ad is massive and in-your-face. As Minyanville points out, this lets Public Ad Campaign make its point without its members getting arrested, which has happened in the past.Continue reading...